DMV wants to charge motorists a $15 fee for walking in the door

Customers wait in line at the DMV in Cranston. [The Providence Journal, file / Sandor Bodo]▲

The fee would apply to license and registration renewals that could have been completed online or by mail. It would not apply to Real ID license renewals, which must be done in person.

As if the time spent waiting to do business at the Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles wasn't costly enough, the state agency wants Rhode Islanders to pay extra for the privilege.

A $15 "in-person" customer-service fee is one of the ideas the DMV is pitching to Gov. Gina Raimondo in its annual budget request.

Another is a $15 "late fee" that would hit motorists renewing a license or registration that has expired. Both fees, included in the DMV's plan for the year starting next July 1, would come on top of what customers have to pay to complete either transaction.

The rationale behind the fees is to get people to do transactions online and reduce the volume of walk-ins, especially on peak days, when wait times have ballooned in recent years.

"DMV wait times at the beginning and end of each month increase greatly, in large part due to motorists renewing their registrations right before or soon after the expiration date," the budget request explains regarding the late fee. "Adding a late fee for the renewal of expired licenses and registrations will encourage motorists to renew in advance which will lead to a more even distribution of customers in DMV branches throughout each month."

Similarly, the customer service fee is intended to discourage "customers who unnecessarily appear in-person to complete a transaction that could have been completed online or through the mail."

The $15 fee would apply to standard license and registration renewals that can be completed online or by mail. This does not include a switch to a Real ID license, which has to be done in person. The fee would apply to walk-ins at AAA offices that process license and registration renewals as well as walk-ins at regular DMV branches.

Online transaction fees would remain.

The DMV request estimates the walk-in customer service charge would bring in $1,016,035 in new annual revenue. The late fee would generate an additional $1.5 million each year. It proposes launching both on Oct. 1 next year.

But shorter wait times are far from guaranteed with this plan.

The DMV updates its annual wait time targets in each annual budget request, and the new goals for future years did not go down.

Next year, the DMV hopes to achieve a one-hour average wait time (measured from when a customer pulls a ticket, often after having waited in a line, to when their transaction is finished.) That is the same one-hour average wait time the DMV aspires to this year and targeted in 2018-19.

Rhode Island was more ambitious in prior years. In its fall 2017 budget request, the DMV listed a 20-minute average wait time target for the 2016-17 fiscal year and a half-hour goal for 2017-18.

The agency didn't meet any of those goals. Customers on average waited 39 minutes in 2016, 59 minutes in 2017 and 63 minutes in 2018.

DMV leaders point out that over this period of time they dealt with the changeover to a new computer system and late last year began issuing federally mandated Real ID driver's licenses, which take much longer to process than conventional license renewals.

To deal with the burden of Real ID and push wait times down, the DMV's budget proposals for next year include a pilot program to process Real ID licenses on Saturdays only, by reservation. The program is expected to cost $115,000 and over the long term, DMV leaders hope to shift more services that now need to be done in person to a reservation system.

The DMV budget request also seeks $2.2 million next year to keep extra staff working after next October's deadline for people to get Real IDs.

"... it is not expected that all individuals who will require a Real ID compliant credential will receive one by this date," the request says.

Agency proposals are one of the first steps in the state budget process, and there is no guarantee Raimondo will include the new DMV fees in her January tax and spending plan or that lawmakers will go along with it in approving the budget next summer.

Another DMV project in the budget request is the replacement of Rhode Island's wave-motif license plates, which is supposed to start June 1 of next year. The DMV doesn't have the$398,000 it needs to do it this fiscal year and wants to push the start date back a month, to the start of the next fiscal year, July 1.

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